I can get the saved control panel to show up in the second window when I hit L in Mame.

However,It shows all the keycodes for each button. It doesn't show the functions of each button... "fire" "kick" etc.I can't get the "Preview" in CPWizard to populate any games.I'm running MAME 196 and the most recent version of CPWizard.

I've turned the MAME output system to "windows" as I saw it commented on in a few online posts.

Is there a thorough tutorial for the CPWizard program out there?

I'm sure I'm missing tons and am willing to do the research but thought I'd reach out for help.

So after much reading posts and tutorials, I still dont have any roms populating the Preview list in CPWizard.

I was starting to think that newer versions of MAME didn't work with CPWizard. I searched the forums and found one individual post how CPWizard was working with his 186 setup so I downloaded that today and set everything up but still nothing...

I'm willing to pay someone to help me get this running because I think it's the perfect solution for my cabinet!

To be honest, at this point, jumping into the CPWizard rabbit hole is only recommended for the obsessive compulsive. I love CPW but I don't think it is supported anymore. For those of us who already have it set up, it would be a big hassle to switch to something else, so we're caught in a "sunk cost" situation trying to keep things working. However, if you are only starting now, you might want to see what else is out there.

At any rate, I had the same issue as you recently and was able to resolve it in this way:1. Go to settings and check the box for "dynamic data loading"2. Your preview list should now populate; if not, restart CPW3. Once satisfied that the preview list is working, uncheck the dynamic data loading box again to revert to your original state

After that, the list should always be populated without having to go through that again. You will notice long pauses when exiting the settings screen after checking and unchecking those options.

Still no luck. Head_kaze posted a while ago in the the CPWizard sticky thread that he had it running with MAME 186. I even went as far as finding a MAME 186 romset and downloading MAME 186 and testing. I was hopeful but no go.

I'm close to giving up on this idea. What kind of alternatives for CPWizard are out there? I can only really find LEDBlinky which will light the controls and announce the function of each button. That might be a decent alternative. In an ideal world, I'd have both but....

In the current state of things, if I had to start over again, I would simply create pre-made layout images for each game, like I used to do before I started using CPW. To go this route, you could use CPW itself to export the layouts, or perhaps any other software with that simpler capability. Of course, this would only be recommended if you have a collection of a manageable size. Even when using CPW, you will notice that so many games required special settings with manipulation of layout files in the correct order, and in some cases even game-specific layouts.

As far as true alternatives to CPW, there is a piece of software called "CPViewer" out there that I believe works in a similar way but I have not looked into it. Everything else I've seen, simply uses CPWizard to load the controls or create pre-made layout images.

Did you try the trick with dynamic data loading that I posted above?I edited my original post as I realized it was poorly redacted and may have been confusing.

I think the only paths that are really required there are the MAME path itself, cfg and ctrlr. Everything else is to show artwork. If you don't have your roms under MAME\roms, try moving a few to that path, then force a rescan by using dynamic data loading trick to see if that shows something, although it should find the roms from your MAME ini file paths.

The only other think I can think of is that if perhaps you have something set up in the MAME Filters tab that is preventing your games from showing up. Make sure that Filter Rotation shows: "Show All Games".

1) If you don't have your roms under MAME\roms, try moving a few to that path, then force a rescan by using dynamic data loading trick to see if that shows something, although it should find the roms from your MAME ini file paths.

2) The only other think I can think of is that if perhaps you have something set up in the MAME Filters tab that is preventing your games from showing up. Make sure that Filter Rotation shows: "Show All Games".

1) You mean in the actual MAME folder not in the CPWizard MAME Paths(I dont have a CPWizard MAME Paths for "Roms")? If yes, I keep my roms for MAME under the MAME folder "Roms". I've double checked my mame.ini and it has the correct path to the roms as well.

2) I've double checked that as well, it's showing "Show All Games".

CPWizard takes a while when you initially set the file path to the Mame.exe program. I assume it's creating the XML file in CP Wizard labeled "[LIST_MAME] that is around 200 mb file size? I use my Chrome browser to open XML files. I can open the one in the CPWizard folder labeled "controls.xml" and it seems to have all the proper info in there to label the controls. However, when I click on [LIST_MAME].xml nothing will open up in my browser. It opens a tab for it but it is blank(despite being 200+mb). Could this be where my problem lies?

Not being able to open the XML file might be an issue with the browser itself. Try opening it in a text editor like Programmer's Notepad or something like that. Besides [LIST_MAME], another file that gets created in CPW's "Data" folder is [LIST_MAME_MINI]. Do you get that one? It is automatically recreated every time CPW sees that the controls.xml file has been modified. If you don't see that mame_mini file, that would explain why the list is empty.

Here is an excerpt from mine with just a few games. You could try pasting this into a blank text file and saving it as [LIST_MAME_MINI].xml in the Data folder as an experiment.

It's generated by MAME with a ton of info for each game about original controls, dip switches, etc. Controls.xml adds control names. I can't quite figure out why it's not working for you. I have to go now but I'll keep thinking about this.